THE EPO and EPO-funded media are not a source of information but they are often the target of criticism or ridicule. Now that the EPO promotes monopolies on plants (to increase the number of granted patents, irrespective of the overall impact on society) we wish to highlight CEVA et al with their pro-GMO (i.e. patent monopoly) agenda, as covered in IP Watch the other day [1]. This is a fantastic example of the harms of patent maximalism — something that EPO-funded sites sure love and even take pride in. Let’s look at IAM ‘magazine’, based on the past few days’ articles.

“It glorifies what the site profits from, but at whose expense?”“IP Hall of Fame” is a term like that’s being used by IAM right now. Like “Monopoly of fame” or “Protectionism of the year”, one has to be pretty brainwashed to really ‘dig’ into that. Then again, what can be expected from a site which targets ‘IP’ lawyers? It glorifies what the site profits from, but at whose expense?

According to this article, the patent troll of Ericsson still attacks Android OEMs (impacting Linux, by extension). To quote: “The IPKat has been aware for some time that the Patents Court, in the person of Mr Justice Birss, has been devoting considerable time to a series of cases concerning mobile phone technology (Unwired Planet v Huawei and Samsung).”

“BlackBerry, despite its embrace of Android, will quite likely troll other Android OEMs with patents.”According to IAM, BlackBerry is now acting somewhat like a troll, much as we foresaw and predicted. But IAM uses terms like “monetisation”, which are effectively euphemisms (how about “corporate foodchain” as a euphemism?). To quote: “When BlackBerry concluded a cross-licensing agreement with Cisco last June, with a provision for the Californian company to pay an on-going royalty, this blog stated that the deal could mark the start of the Canadian telecoms and wireless business becoming a major player in the patent monetisation space.”

BlackBerry, despite its embrace of Android, will quite likely troll other Android OEMs with patents. Microsoft, according to this IAM report, is hoarding LG patents that it can later use to extort (or tax) Android devices more than it already does. To quote IAM, “20 US assets covering mobile telecoms assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC; also 44 assets on 9th April.”

“…there is already patent trolling in China, but the opaque court system changes all the risk equations…” – James SalsmanThe euphemism “monetisation” again appeared in IAM around the same time, in relation to China’s SIPO. The lenient patent system in China (like USPTO in the US) could bring in the trolls; maybe that’s what what “monetisation” now means in IAM (if not NPE). As Jack Ellis put it, in order to sell the “monetisation” (trolls) agenda in China (shaming tactics): “Protectionist, biased, anti-foreigner: those are kinds of labels that are often attached to China’s IP enforcement system by rights holders from outside of the country.”

As James Salsman ‏put it when asked, “there is already patent trolling in China, but the opaque court system changes all the risk equations [...] I lived in Shanghai working at @EFLabs where patents prevented pronunciation intelligibility remediation software improvements” (the latter, with context, can be found here).

The bottom line is, the Web continues to be saturated with coverage about patent matters composed by people who profit from it. Some even receive money from patent offices. Therein exists a real, profound problem. Public interests are ignored at best and habitually trampled. It’s everyone’s ethical imperative to change that, or else very few people will hoard all the wealth and many productive human activities (such as sharing, trade, invention and manufacturing) will effectively be banned except when permitted by those few wealth hoarders. █

At issue, according to a joint press release (Via Campesina, Grain, and ETC Group), is the agenda, which they find unbalanced as it includes speakers from industry such as, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, CropLife International, and CEVA among others, which they say are promoting GMOs, while they found only one speaker openly critical of GMOs.

As the EFF put it this week: “The Federal Circuit’s rule privileges patent owners over consumers, and helps ensure even less competition in the resale market. We hope the Supreme Court takes a hard look at this case, and restores consumers’ rights in products they purchase.”

Worth noting is the fact that legal sites wrote like 10 times more articles than general news sites (or technology sites) about this case, e.g. [1, 2]. A lot of people don’t ‘get’ patents; neither do journalists. They’d use silly phrases like “invent patents” or “make patents”. The propaganda worked on them.

“Here, the court held that this type of restriction is enforceable for Lexmark, but only because Lexmark’s product is covered by patent rights.” –Dennis CrouchHere is the best report we’ve found on this subject (so far). TechDirt, which has covered this subject for over a decade (going back to 2004 if not earlier), wrote: “if you fail to block competition with one kind, apparently you can try, try again with another kind — and eventually you’ll end up in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who will mess everything up and kill off the competition. Printer company Lexmark has been at war with alternative suppliers of ink for well over a decade. As you may be aware, printer ink is sold at a ridiculously high markup, such that one estimate (from over a decade ago) noted that in order to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with printer ink, it would cost you $5.9 billion (yes, with a “b”) at the checkout counter of your local office-supply retailer. The printer makers have notably taken a “give away cheap crappy printers at a low cost, and make it up in seriously overpricing the ink” strategy to their businesses. This kind of thing works great until someone tries to step in and sell competing ink.”

Suffice to say, this case is about keeping the prices artificially high (higher by several orders of magnitude than the production cost). A response posted by Dennis Crouch said: “I was surprised at the en banc Federal Circuit’s decision in Lexmark to re-affirm Mallinckrodt — giving a seller power to block future resale and reuse of a patented product. My surprise is grounded in the longstanding tradition in American property law of promoting the free-flow of commerce by refusing to enforce servitudes that limit the alienation or use of goods. To be clear, courts have often enforced contracts between willing parties to this end, but those same courts have refused to allow restrictive covenants to cling to the good and bind any subsequent purchaser. Here, the court held that this type of restriction is enforceable for Lexmark, but only because Lexmark’s product is covered by patent rights.”

“Remember that CAFC is responsible for many other equally tactless decisions.”It was not the first time that Crouch’s blog covered this case in recent days (we mentioned this a few times in last week’s posts). Basically, Lexmark twists and bends the law for price-fixing/price hikes. Other companies, such as HP, would no doubt benefit from this, at the expense of the public. To quote Crouch’s blog: “The presumptions are of some importance for those operating on the ground. Here, the US court will presume that foreign sales of a product do not exhaust the US patent right. Thus, an importer must obtain a release/license of those rights to avoid liability (assuming a valid and otherwise infringed patent). Of course, that license right may be implied based upon providing notice of the importation intent. In addition, depending upon the location of sale, UCC 2-312 (or its foreign equivalent) may create a presumption of license depending upon the situation.”

When laws are being passed to protect the business models or large corporations at the expense of the public, are the laws at all legitimate? Should we not feel free to challenge them or better yet, engage in civil disobedience? Remember that CAFC is responsible for many other equally tactless decisions. It was also CAFC that got software patents started, not just in the US but in the whole world. In the past we showed evidence of institutional corruption inside CAFC. █

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Summary: The Unitary Patent Court (UPC), the latest name of a decade-long effort to increase litigation, damages, injunctions, trolling etc. inside Europe, is being railroaded through the system like a Trojan horse, relying on public apathy (as the public does not know anything about its existence and the harsh reality)

Amerikat (Ward) from IP Katcontinues her push for UPC as if it’s already a done deal (it’s not) and some “IP & Technology lawyer” promotes this UPC coup which European citizens never got to vote on. It’s not just women doing this, but it’s almost always patent lawyers, which is quite revealing, is it not? “ADR is also part of the new European #patent framework. Draft #UPC mediation rules now published,” the latter wrote.

Benjamin Henrion (FFII) responded by saying: “Rules cannot be written by an administrative committee.”

“…in the worst case, they will just copy/paste the rules and ask parliaments to rubberstamp.” –Benjamin Henrion (FFII)“Unitary Patent Court rules and laws cannot be made by an administrative committee,” he later added, “only by elected parliaments” (“don’t worry,” I said, “they can always just bribe some politicians to sign off the rules they pass to them for signing”).

A pro-patents account then jumped in to say: “It is supposed to be monitored by EU Council whose members are supposed to be monitored by elected parliaments, monitored by people.”

“When was the UPC ever monitored by people other than patent lawyers [and] other profiteers,” I responded, comparing them to foxes in the hen house. At this stage Henrion said “that’s stealing democracy. There are clear ECHR rulings on this.”

“Well, it’s not like the patent lawyers always honestly cared about law,” I responded, “they game it!” That’s what they do for a living, that is what people pay them a lot of money for.

As Henrion put it, “in the worst case, they will just copy/paste the rules and ask parliaments to rubberstamp.”

Then, “patentlyGerman” (his occupation isn’t hard to guess) said: “The Munich local div of the #UPC will be housed in a boring, but centrally located building” (patent lawyers and propagandists say “will”, not “would”, as if UPC is already unstoppable and inevitable).

“UPC is a Trojan horse that European citizens neither want nor need (at least those who even know it exists and understand what it’s for).”Thankfully, as some people come to realise, Spain is doing the right thing by rejecting the UPC, in spite of political blackmail.

Show us anyone other than patent lawyers (or the EPO) promoting the UPC and we shall award with a prize. All we have here is a coup d’état. UPC is a Trojan horse that European citizens neither want nor need (at least those who even know it exists and understand what it’s for).

UPC is a spit in the face of European democracy. It’s time for more sites (not sites of patent lawyers) to openly talk about it and properly inform the public. █

Contents

I recently had a problem trying to install the NVIDIA driver for my machine. It seemed the latest driver had stopped supporting my graphics card, and after updating my kernel, I was out of a driver. The question, obviously, was “which card did I have?” But, I didn’t remember. If you have to name the chipset of your motherboard, specify the CPU in your box or get any other kind of hardware-related information, Linux provides several utilities to help you. In my case, I quickly could get the full ID of my graphics card, confirm that it really was getting a bit long in the tooth and decide that a newer one wasn’t such a bad idea.

Kernel Space

Kevin (age 32) holds a PhD in music and taught himself programming in his spare time. He completed the free Introduction to Linux course through edX and put that knowledge to use by automating some of his work with shell scripts, which, he says, has saved him an enormous amount of time. He hopes to become a Linux sys admin and move his music department to open source.

It looks like renowned kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman is on vacation, as Sasha Levin had the great pleasure of announcing earlier today, February 16, 2016, the general availability of the eighteenth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.1 LTS.

We reported earlier the release of Linux kernel 4.1.18 LTS for GNU/Linux operating system, as announced by Sasha Levin, but it looks like another kernel maintainer posted news on kernel mailing list about the release of Linux kernel 3.12.54 LTS.

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is an invitation-only, intimate event where the world’s leading technologists and business leaders come together to define how open source software projects are built, governed and sustained for market transformation or disruption. Open source software and collaborative development have come to dominate the way IT infrastructure today is built, but not all projects are created equal. This event aims to provide the neutral forum where project leaders, contributors and maintainers, as well as business and community experts, come together to share best practices and new ideas to support and manage the largest shared technologies of our time.

Vulkan (spelled with a “k”, not a “c”) is a powerful new 3D graphics API from the Khronos Group, the same consortium that developed its spiritual predecessor, OpenGL, and other related standards. Like OpenGL, Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications such as games and interactive media, but offers higher performance and lower CPU usage, much like Direct3D 12 and Metal. It is still awaiting release—some drivers and SDKs are still under development—but it promises to provide a variety of advantages over these other APIs once released.

If you didn’t already do so, be sure to read my big Vulkan Linux write-up that covers details on drivers, demos / games / benchmarks, the Vulkan common loader, and much more. I’ve been working on that article for a number of days along with busy testing early Vulkan code and drivers. But if you’re short on time, here is the quick summary.

As you may know, the first stable and mature version of the Vulkan 3D API (Application Programming Interface) has been released today, February 16, 2016, and now many open source projects are looking into implementing it in their software.

Today sees the public release of Vulkan 1.0, the next-generation graphics API from the Khronos Group. As a member of Khronos, Collabora has been committed to improving EGL, OpenGL ES and OpenGL itself, and this continues with Vulkan.

With lineage dating back to 1992, OpenGL has served the industry well for many years, establishing itself as the standard for accelerated graphics rendering from large-scale cloud render farms to devices as small as the Raspberry Pi. Through this time, the nature of both graphics hardware and software has changed dramatically, from simple fixed-function pipelines to fully-programmable general-purpose co-processors.

After only three weeks of the announcement of the MPlayer 1.2 open-source video player software, the project’s development team today, February 16, 2016, unveiled the MPlayer 1.3 release.

As reported by us yesterday, February 15, the FFmpeg 3.0 open-source multimedia framework made a surprise appearance and brought in a great number of new features, so the biggest new feature of MPlayer 1.3 is, of course, support for FFmpeg 3.0.

Every hard disk, however large it may be, is filled up to capacity after some time. Then it’s about time to find out where all that disk space has gone, and to reclaim some of it.

This is what KDirStat was all about. The original KDirStat was a KDE 3 application. Now, there is the brand-new QDirStat, based on the same code, but with most of it rewritten with newer technology based on the latest Qt 5. It no longer depends on KDE; rather, it’s now desktop agnostic, running just as well under GNOME, Xfce and all thoser other X11-based Linux/BSD desktops.

I held off on commenting on the rumors and did hear things from a few of my sources who wish to remain anonymous. However, I’ve now heard enough information from multiple informants that I feel comfortable saying that Tomb Raider (2013) is in fact coming to Linux and will be here in the next few weeks.

LunarG, Inc. today announced the release of the first Vulkan™ Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows® and Linux operating systems. The SDK includes the resources developers need to get started creating the next generation of 3D graphics applications.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

As you may have heard, Endless joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board last week. We appreciate all the kind words of welcome we have received and are looking forward to strengthening our ties with this community. This has been a coming for a bit, and I’m looking forward for us to contribute more over the coming year!

[...]

We can’t do this alone. We are looking for some great engineers to join our team. If this mission sounds great and you’re interested in working with us, let us know! We are looking for people who are passionate about bringing a great desktop to the rest of the world while developing some high-quality Free Software.

The GNOME Project is about to come up with the first Beta build of the upcoming major release of the open source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, GNOME 3.20, so they’re updating most of the core apps and components.

Chromebooks have been generated quite some buzz in the last couple of years. The main advantage for Chromebooks is that these are inexpensive laptops with modest hardware and are good looking as well.

Chromebooks are based on Google’s web-oriented Chrome OS. While Chrome OS itself is based on the Linux kernel, it is not really the same experience as full desktop Linux. There are ways to install Linux on Chromebook, but I am not going to talk about those today. Instead, I am going to list four Linux distributions which are either meant for Chromebooks or they imitate the looks of Chrome OS.

One thing that confuses some new Linux users is just how modular Linux can be, and on nearly every level. It turns out to be liberating in the end, but it can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s nice, sometimes, to come across a project that brings a bunch of modular technology and binds them together nice and neatly for users. In the world of digital audio workstations, the project that does this most profoundly is the Linux Multimedia Studio, better known as LMMS.

Reviews

Staying anonymous on the Internet might not necessarily mean the same as surfing the web safely but rather keeping yourself safe from prying eyes that may otherwise take advantage of the vulnerability of your system thereby exposing you and your data for whomever might just be up for the grabbing – especially some hacker snooping around for sensitive data to hoard (particularly if you’re being targeted) and use for otherwise evil purposes that can have some serious effects on the violated individual.

New Releases

Univention GmbH was pleased to announce on February 16, 2016, the general availability of the first point release of their stable Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.1 server-oriented GNU/Linux operating system based on Debian.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

If you thought that this review would continue with the usual sections like keyboard setup, list of applications, network drive connectivity and so on, I must disappoint you.

My time with PCLinuxOS KDE 2014.12 finished at that point. I see no reason to test a distribution that is so narrow-minded that it cannot allow users outside of the US to use it out of the box, and that does not bother with updating their core ISO image. There are plenty of distributions that work much better than PCLinuxOS.

The big story today in Linux news was the release of the long awaited Vulkan graphics API. The news was carried by just about everyone. Elsewhere, blogger DarkDuck said PCLinuxOS is “the walking dead” and a critical vulnerability in glibc has experts warning to upgrade immediately. SUSE announced SUSECon today and Charles-H. Schulz blogged about the “unusual” LibreOffice 5.1 release on this The Document Foundation’s fourth birthday.

Fedora

Neville Cross is a Nicaraguan hotel manager who has a passion for technology. He has an Amateur Radio license, and was doing stuff with packet radio (ax.25 protocol) in 2008. That made him look for help in the local Linux community. As he used Red Hat Linux for a while in 2000, it was natural for him to take a look at Fedora. Instead of getting help, he got involved in the local FOSS community, especially in the Fedora local group. At that moment, others Linux distributions had strong support from the international community, but Fedora did not. So he took on the challenge to close the gap. That is how Cross originally showed up in Fedora landscape many years ago.

Debian Family

The FOSSASIA 2016 conference is taking place next month, 18-20 March at the Science Centre Singapore. The FOSSASIA community has also offered to host a MiniDebConf Singapore 2016 and pgDay Asia 2016. With sufficient interest from volunteers and participants, these events could do a lot to raise the profile of free software in the region.

The open source ecosystem for mobile devices has grown larger with the announcement of a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones in the form of Maru OS, which is now open source.

Maru is a Debian-based operating system that lets you run a complete desktop environment from a smartphone. By connecting it to an external display, you get what looks like a traditional, full-blown Debian GNU/Linux system, while still having access to your Android phone.

Emmabuntüs is a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made specifically for refurbished computers destined for humanitarian organisationsand to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware and to reduce over consumption & waste in electronics. Emmabuntus 8 Beta is the first distro based on Debian in the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

FairPhone 2 is just one of the phones that are betting on Ubuntu Touch community ports, and it looks like the project is coming along.

The ability to port Ubuntu Touch for various devices has been promoted by Canonical ever since the start of the project, more than three years ago but little has come of it. The community tries to make this happen, but it’s not like making Android run on other devices. It’s a complex problem that usually revolves around device drivers.

The main problem that developers face when trying to make Ubuntu Touch run on various devices is the lack of driver support. We’ve seen many popular phones running Ubuntu over the years, but most projects stop when having to implement GSM or Bluetooth support. For example, one of the first phones to get Ubuntu Touch was a Samsung Galaxy S3, but nothing came of it.

We are only a couple of months away from the next major release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and some of its neat new features are yet to be revealed.

Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland writes today about one of the awesome things that will be implemented by default in the upcoming Linux-based distribution, ZFS, the robust file system that everyone talks about these days, which Canonical will bake directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical informs us earlier about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch development team in preparation for the soon-to-be-released OTA software updates for Ubuntu-powered devices.

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may know that Google Security Team and Red Hat have disclosed a severe Glibc (GNU C Library) vulnerability, which could affect a huge number of devices and computers.

Erle Robotics, which I mentioned in last week’s piece about the increasingly important role of Linux in robotics, supplies cheap components for DIY Raspberry Pi projects. I got in touch with the makers at Erle this week to come up with a great tutorial for our readers.

Your Raspberry Pi’s mobility is usually restricted by the length of the power lead. Rather than limiting it to your desk or living room, however, you can use it for mobile projects as diverse as launching it into near-Earth orbit or monitoring and automating your garden.

Of course, to do this you will need batteries, but adding battery power to your Raspberry Pi is simpler than you might have imagined. All that is required are six rechargeable AA batteries (or single-charge alkaline), a battery box with space for the batteries and a UBEC. The latter is a Universal Battery Elimination Circuit, a voltage regulator that will regulate the power supply and prevent damage to the Raspberry Pi, and can be bought for under £10.

Gumstix has added a Raspberry Pi Compute Module baseboard design to its online DIY board dev tool, and is selling working units based on the design for $49.

Back in November, Gumstix opened up its Geppetto online DIY design tool and quick-turn prototype manufacturing service to the development of carrier boards for third-party SBCs and COMs based on TI Sitara AM335x SoCs. Supported non-Gumstix processor boards initially included BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleBone Black single-board computer, as well as Critical Link’s MitySOM-335x, and DAVE’s Diva AM335x computer-on-modules.

Phones

Tizen

Samsung’s strategy of making its initial Tizen smartphones fall under the budget category seems to be working out quite well, as a recent report from market research agency Strategy Analytics claims that Samsung sold over 3 million Tizen smartphones in 2015! While the numbers may look huge, Samsung’s very own android devices from the J series proved to be a problem for the sales of Tizen based Z3 and Z1 launched in India.

Android

Android initially followed the open-source model, but Google made restrictions to its key components. It’s implausible to debate its licensing nuances, but Android has become the dominant mobile ecosystem with relentless advertising and a rich app store (albeit with thousands of duplicates). When the BlackBerry 10 was launched, it was met with muted skepticism, but it went on to prove its mettle with rigorous compliance, top-notch certifications for regulated industries and a niche segment that BlackBerry called as prosumers. Having personally used various iterations of the BlackBerry 10 and their software, it is clear that these devices were designed to be productive from the word go without reliance on various applications.

The annual Mobile World Congress trade show is less than a week away, which means we’re about to be introduced to some of the most exciting new smartphones that will be released this year. Well, perhaps “introduced” isn’t the best choice of words, since a long string of leaks has already revealed just about everything there is to know about the three biggest stars of the show.

The smartphone maker Celkon has expanded its product portfolio with the launch budget Android tablet named CT11. The company has priced the tablet at Rs 2,999 and it is available for purchase via all retail stores and online via Amazon.

On the specifications front, Celkon CT11 features a 7-inch WVGA display and runs on Android 4.4 KitKat operating system. The device is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core ARM Cortex A7 processor and its onboard storage accounts to 32GB which can be expanded further via microSD card.

Samsung had an unexpected hit on its hands with the Edge display on the GS6 Edge and Edge+, but that was all because of how it looked; there was hardly any additional functionality tied to the curved screen. With the Android 6.0 update (and upcoming Galaxy S7 Edge, I’m sure), Samsung is adding some new features that make the Edge display more worthwhile.

Last November, reports started circulating — stemming from a Wall Street Journal article — that Google would kill off its popular Chromebook lineup in favor of making the move entirely to Android by 2017. This maneuver made sense, given the flexibility of Android, something that’s so clearly absent from Google’s other operating system, Chrome OS. It also seemed plausible because of the recently announced, keyboard-equipped Pixel C tablet, which has been available for purchase since mid-December.

Whether you’re a retailer or a restaurateur, a point-of-sale (POS) system can make a big difference in streamlining your business. However, the scope of POS is very broad with hundreds of different POS software packages and vendors. You can expect to invest a fair bit of time figuring out what will best fit your business.

In our previous article, we had focused on The Network Platform for Network Functions Virtualization (OPNFV), mainly covering the virtual infrastructure and the corresponding manager that support Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). In this article, we will focus on open source options that are available for building different virtual network functions.

The Open Networking Foundation on Tuesday introduced an update to its Atrium open source SDN stack, with added support for OpenDaylight and leaf-spine architecture.

Atrium, released last year, is designed as a platform to give network operators a taste of open source SDN — “a vertical slice of something useful,” Dan Pitt, Open Networking Foundation executive director, tells Light Reading. Open source and SDN are fundamental to New IP networks. (See ONF Updates Atrium Open SDN Software.)

My own understanding of open source has also significantly changed as concept of open source has evolved from one of idealism to practicality. Open source has transitioned from a bunch of hackers hidden away in basements preaching the gospel in niche forums, to an international pool of developers collaboratively creating projects in the open.

As promised last year when the company introduced it, Pinterest today announced that it has released its Teletraan tool for deploying source code on GitHub under an open source Apache license.

“Teletraan is designed to do one thing, deploy code,” Pinterest software engineer Baogang Song wrote in a blog post. “Not only does it support critical features such as zero downtime deploy, rollback, staging and continuous deploy, but it also has convenient features, such as displaying commit details, comparing different deploys, notifying deploy state changes through either email or chat room, displaying OpenTSDB metrics and more.”

Events

Today I’m going to give you a summary and my impressions of DevConf.cz 2016. For those of you, who still don’t know, DevConf.cz is a yearly conference for Linux and JBoss Community Developers, Admins and Linux users organized by Red Hat Czech Republic, the Fedora and JBoss Community. This was my first DevConf and I’m very happy that I got into it as a volunteer. Actually being a volunteer at a conference is the best way to experience it I got into working on it really early, shortly after joining Red Hat, in July I think. Having literally no idea who had worked on the graphic materials before, we started almost from scratch. First things first, covers for social media accounts were created: facebook, google+ and twitter. Looking at them now after all the work done, I see ways for improvement. Good thing we have started work on DevConf.cz 2017 early, and by early I mean already.

Web Browsers

Luckily Chrome and Firefox are completely automated. I had to do some trickery to get Chrome working, filed a bug, doesn’t sound like they’re interested in fixing it. I also had to do some trickery to get Firefox to work (I ended up using our marionette framework directly instead), there are some bugs, not much traction there either.

Chrome

Mozilla

Today, the Internet is one of our most important global public resources. It’s open, free and essential to our daily lives. It’s where we chat, play, bank and shop. It’s also where we create, learn and organize.

All of this is made possible by a set of core principles. Like the belief that individual security and privacy on the Internet is fundamental.

Mozilla is devoted to standing up for these principles and keeping the Internet a global public resource. That means watching for threats. And recently, one of these threats to the open Internet has started to grow: efforts to undermine encryption.

The foundation that really turned the way that we used to create and edit documents, presentations and all other office works in Linux. Today that foundation, The Document Foundation has turned 4. I congratulate the one team that started creating an amazing office suit, LibreOffice 4 years ago.

The Document Foundation was officially registered in Berlin on February 17, 2012. Four years have gone by, and the project has grown to a size that nobody would have dared to dream at that time. Happy Birthday !

The Document Foundation just released LibreOffice 5.1 and I would like to share some personal views about it. First: give it a try, you will be impressed both by the performance and the changes in the user interface. You can then check the abridged release notes here and the full, canonical notes there.

On Tuesday, IBM announced that it’s been working to make blockchain technology—which was refined and popularized by Bitcoin—easier for businesses to use for financial and non-financial purposes. Specifically, the company is launching what it’s calling “blockchain-as-a-service,” or a set of tools for “creating, deploying, running, and monitoring blockchain applications on the IBM Cloud.”

Marius Strobl was happy to inform all fans of the FreeBSD operating system that they can now test drive the second Beta build of the upcoming FreeBSD 10.3 release, which should hit the streets in late March 2016.

Public Services/Government

While open source software and its adoption in government continue to grow, the push for open source is not as clear as for other government mandates. Though there is no requirement to use open source, there are clear indications that open source solutions should be given at least as much consideration — if not more — than proprietary systems.

“We believe in using and contributing back to open source software as a way of making it easier for the government to share data, improve tools and services, and return value to taxpayers,” the White House recently posted on its developer-focused website.

Openness/Sharing

Callum Hay and Eric Portelance want to be Canada’s first open-source brewers. This spring, when they open Halo Brewery in Toronto’s trendy Junction Triangle neighbourhood, they plan to share all of their beer recipes with the public on their website, complete with ingredients and amounts, fermentation temperatures and water chemistry.

It’s a concept that was met with puzzlement when they started asking investors for startup funds. “What about Coca-Cola?” the two were asked, again and again. “They don’t share their secret formula.”

Open Hardware

Doing good for the world is often the nature of an open source software or hardware project. Offering code and schematics to others free of charge and with a license that allows for reuse and modification is often done to help others. Knowing this, I was still surprised to learn about an incredible project that combines robotics and prosthetics.

Open source hardware, also known as open hardware, is hardware built from design information that could be copyrighted or licensed. But, it is made available at no charge, according to a press release from the association. It empowers youth, helps them get hands-on experience, develops skill sets and promotes innovation. The association is looking at having a network on international experts too as part of the programme.

Programming

Our sutra for today expounds on the sayings of the masters Donald Knuth and Ken Thompson, who in their wisdom have observed “Premature optimization is the root of all evil” and “When in doubt, use brute force.”

My main side project recently has been SRC, a simple version-control system for small projects. One of the constraints I was thinking about when I designed SRC was that the status command – the one that gives you a display saying which files have been modified since they were checked in – needs to be really fast.

The popularity of Git and GitHub among Linux developers is well established. But what do developers think of them? And should GitHub really be synonymous with Git itself? A Linux redditor recently asked about this and got some very interesting answers.

The Duke of Cambridge has said that Britain’s ability to work in partnership with other nations is the “bedrock of our security and prosperity”, in remarks that will prompt speculation that he is endorsing the UK’s continued membership of the EU.

But Stephen, these foul people are a minority! Indeed they are. But I would contend that just one turd in a reservoir is enough to persuade one not to drink from it. 99.9% of the water may be excrement free, but that doesn’t help. With Twitter, for me at least, the tipping point has been reached and the pollution of the service is now just too much.

Health/Nutrition

Acting on a tip, agents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration paid a surprise visit to a cheese factory in rural Pennsylvania on a cold November day in 2012.

They found what they were looking for: evidence that Castle Cheese Inc. was doctoring its 100 percent real parmesan with cut-rate substitutes and such fillers as wood pulp and distributing it to some of the country’s biggest grocery chains.

A huge amount of software can be hijacked by hackers on the other side of the internet, thanks to a serious security vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc). The library is used by the vast majority of Linux distributions, meaning the vulnerability is widespread.

Dating back to the release of glibc 2.9 in 2008, CVE-2015-7547 is a stack-based buffer overflow bug in the glibc DNS client-side resolver that opens the door to remote code execution when a particular library function is used. Software using the function can be exploited with attacker-controlled domain names, attacker-controlled DNS servers or man-in-the-middle attacks.

At the moment, such ways to hack systems is very much limited to research. But, researchers feel that in not-so-distant future, hackers could use these techniques by making them more accessible and cheaper.

The NSA is known to study metadata to identify terrorists under its SKYNET program. An expert has recently analyzed some leaked documents and pointed out multiple flaws in the machine learning algorithm used to determine the possibility of a person being a terrorist. As a result, it’s possible that NSA could’ve killed thousands of innocents misclassified as “terrorists”.

Machine learning algorithms used by the U.S. National Security Agency to identify potential terrorists in Pakistan may be ineffective, because we just don’t have enough data to tell the signs of a terrorist, claims an investigation by Ars Technica UK.

Between 2,500 and 4,000 so-called ‘extremists’ have been killed by drone strikes and kill squads in Pakistan since 2004. Maybe as early as 2007, the NSA has targeted terrorists based on metadata supplied by machine learning program named Skynet. I have no idea who would find naming Skynet a machine designed to list people for assassination a bright idea, but that’s besides the point. The real point is that the inner workings of this software, as revealed in part by Edward Snowden from his leaks, suggest that the program might be targeting innocent people.

Researchers have taken a second look at the NSA SKYNET leaks, as well as the GCHQ data-mining problem book first published on Boing Boing, and concluded that the spy agencies have made elementary errors in their machine-learning techniques, which are used to identify candidates for remote assassination by drone.

It’s popular, in media, to depict governments as vast machines that know exactly what they’re doing. The truth, though, is a government is just a group of people, with the same weaknesses and fallacies of people. The NSA is no different, whether it’s making AT&T do all the work or blatantly violating your privacy for laughs. And that would be fine if one of the NSA’s methods of blowing off work wasn’t using what amounts to a marketing algorithm to decide who’s getting killed by drone strikes. And it’s a badly engineered one, to boot.

The short tweet includes only the word “America.” (with a period for emphasis) and a picture of a .45-caliber handgun engraved with his name: “Gov. Jeb Bush.”

The black semiautomatic pistol is made by FN America, which has a manufacturing plant in Columbia, the capital of the next early state in primary voting.

Gun rights have become a central tenet of the Republican campaign for president, with each candidate touting their record with the NRA and history of firearm ownership.

[...]

During World War II, the company was requisitioned by the Nazi military and its factories produced thousands of weapons for Axis troops, including pistols carried by Nazi officers and pilots. One model, the Browning-designed Hi-Power, was used by both the Allies and Axis powers during the war, with FN factories manufacturing a version of the popular handgun for the German military.

Last week, presidential challenger Bernie Sanders attacked his rival Hillary Clinton live on US television for taking advice from Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom he accused of paving the way for genocide with his bombing of Cambodia.

[...]

That was it. The three network evening newscasts, with a typical combined nightly viewership of 24 million, didn’t mention Kissinger. Nor did any of the Sunday morning talkshows. Even PBS NewsHour, whose Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff moderated the debate, never discussed the Kissinger exchange.

The world’s two biggest crude producers have agreed not to increase oil output, according to Qatar’s energy minister, quoted by Bloomberg. OPEC members, such as Venezuela and Nigeria, have been calling for an emergency meeting of the cartel to discuss crude prices that have fallen over 70 percent since 2014.

After meeting with Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said freezing output at January levels would be “adequate” however the country still wants to meet the demand of its customers.

Saudi Arabia has insisted it won’t cut production unless major producers outside the cartel cooperate. Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak has said cooperation is possible if other producers joined in.

Finance

The book is all true in that what happens to that family, and in particular the main everyman character Earl, happened to millions of American families that believed the myths of growth, hard work and a sustainable middle class even as the super wealthy were pulling the money right out of their hands in front of their eyes. Ignore the rising waters, until you feel them up to your Katrina-like lips.

At four locations spread around different parts of the city, homeless people will able to avail themselves of a 10-minute hot shower as well as private toilet and sink out of the trailer towed by a pickup truck. The project cost the city about $87,450 to give Catholic Charities the money to buy and outfit the trailer and run it for a year.

A New Hampshire television news network owned by a former Republican candidate for Senate is working closely with conservative interest groups that are pressuring presidential candidates to take more aggressive positions on use of military force, entitlement reform, and tax cuts.

Millions of workers in the US wake up every morning not knowing what time they will start work, how many hours they will be working, or if they will be working at all. On-call scheduling has always been a part of certain occupations, including firefighters and some doctors. In the past, higher salaries partly compensated for the uncertainties of being on-call.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

Until Jeb Bush proved to be a remarkably inept candidate, it was long expected that the 2016 election would match the son of one former president and brother of another, against the wife of another former president. Further underscoring the dynastic dynamic was that their funding would come from the same sources, numerous powerful factions would have difficulty choosing which candidate would serve their agenda most faithfully, and, as is often true of aristocracies, the two extremely rich families have become very close friends.

Activists have delivered over 1 million signatures to the White House demanding that Obama sign an executive order on dark money. A similar petition set up via the White House website’s system passed the 100,000 signatory threshold requiring the Obama administration to respond.

Sanders recently described the U.S. incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world, as an “international embarrassment,” pledging to prioritize criminal justice reform under his presidency. More than 2.2 million people are behind bars in the nation, according to the latest Department of Justice figures.

He recently decided to organise male-only meet ups in 165 cities across the world where his so-called followers could meet each other and probably share tips on – and this is a direct quote from his site – “sealing the deal”. He has protested time and time again that these gatherings were not pro-rape rallies but this explanation fell on deaf ears and was met with worldwide criticism with some social media users even sending him death threats. Anonymous, famous for their publicity stunts and governmental attacks, went as far as to track down his address and publish it online which I can only imagine led to a barrage of hate mail and harassment from the endless list of people he has offended during his online career.

Reflejos (“Reflections”), a Cuban website that publishes blogs authored on the island, has again shut down the page operated by the anti-capitalist and independent Proyecto Arcoiris (“Rainbow Project”), which defends the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals in Cuba.

[...]

The punishment chosen, the official informed us, was shutting down the blog for a month. This makes me think they actually think very little of what they understand the revolution to be, as they feel that, in a month’s time, all wounds caused by this offense will have healed. Before, they had shut down the site for a week. After the next act of “insubordination,” it will be taken down completely.

This past Friday, we published our response to an Australian lawyer, Stuart Gibson, who apparently works for a real law firm called Mills Oakley. I know that Gibson is a real lawyer, because he’s represented big famous clients in the press before, including this impressive TV appearance in which he is left “categorically denying” statements that his client appears to have made directly and then having to defend himself when the news anchor points out what his client has actually said. Anyway, Mr. Gibson did not appear to appreciate my blog post on Friday, and sent a series of short emails over the weekend, with increasing fervor, in which he insisted that I “get proper legal advice instead of publishing your utter dribble,” that my “legal theories” were “nonsensical” and finally demanded to know if I had “the guts” to face him in court.

I, as you know, am not a lawyer — either in the US or Australia — and honestly had no idea that one was supposed to make legal decisions based on whether or not one had “the guts.” I had always assumed that this was the kind of thing that you need for bar brawls, rather than legal fights. But perhaps things are different down under. Either way, I did get “proper legal advice” (as I had before publishing my original post, but we’ll leave that aside), and given Gibson’s increasing email threats, our lawyer, the wonderful and well-regarded Paul Alan Levy from Public Citizen Litigation Group, has now responded to Gibson on our behalf. You can read it by following the link or embedded below.

There was a moment in my childhood when I learned of the existence of a man named Dick Buttkiss that I realized perfection existed in tiny pockets of real life. I’m watching my 11-year-old son enjoy the same found humor through the realization that if he says “dictionary” very slowly, he can get away with saying “dick” in front of his mother. If you are the kind of person who enjoys a moment in the intellect-free zone that causes us to laugh when the phrase “that’s what she said” is added to nearly anything, then you may already be familiar with the cartoon figure Dickbutt, copyrighted by artist K.C. Green. After all, it includes two of the elemental ingredients, the veritable primary colors of the humor color wheel: male genitalia and a reference to the gluteus maximus.

And while technical glitches happen, this is the same company that has waged war on companies trying to deliver a more innovative, efficient and modern TV viewing experience for decades. This behavior has included suing and whining about Aereo; suing to stop Dish’s Hopper ad-skipping technology (and ignoring editorial firewalls over at CNET to hurt said product in the press); whining about Netflix; suing Star Trek fans for expressing their fandom; and constantly threatening to bury over-the-air TV behind the cable paywall unless everybody does exactly what CBS wants.

Privacy

The super worm known as Stuxnet was but a cog in an active US war program in which hundreds of thousands of network implants and backdoors in Iran networks were actively maintained to facilitate a devastating barrage of hacking attacks, a documentary claims.

Zero Days, due to screen at the Berlin Film Festival today, claims that Stuxnet was just one part of an operation called “Olympic Games” that is itself part of a wider effort dubbed “Nitro Zeus” that involves hundreds of US defence personnel.

Nitro Zeus may also involve Israel, the film alleges.

Reports from those who’ve seen or been briefed on the film suggest it alleges that Stuxnet’s authors attempted to keep the program covert by restricting the malware to infect only Iranian machines.

A newly declassified report by the National Security Agency’s inspector general suggests that the government is receiving far less data from Americans’ international Internet communications than privacy advocates have long suspected.

The EU’s network and information security agency Enisa has become the latest big-name institution to publicly support strong encryption and claim that any attempts to circumvent such systems by law enforcers will undermine industry and civil society.

In a newly released paper, On the free use of cryptographic tools for (self) protection of EU citizens, the agency argued that cryptography provides the electronic equivalent of the “letter cover, the seal or rubber stamp and the signature.”

And you’d be forgiven for believing that the court has now ordered Apple to do the impossible. After all, for well over a year, the DOJ has been arguing that the All Writs Act of 1789 can be used to force Apple to help unlock encrypted phones. And that’s an argument it has continued to make in multiple cases.

We learned on Tuesday evening that a U.S. federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to backdoor an iPhone that was used by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings in December. Apple is fighting the order which would compromise the security of all its users around the world.

We are supporting Apple here because the government is doing more than simply asking for Apple’s assistance. For the first time, the government is requesting Apple write brand new code that eliminates key features of iPhone security—security features that protect us all. Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key so that it can open a single phone. And once that master key is created, we’re certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security.

Due to restrictions and localization of different internet services and sites like YouTube, Netflix, live sports etc., internet users like to use best free VPN services to access the content without any borders. So, keeping the user’s choices in view, fossBytes has come up with a list of the best free VPN services 2016.

The New York ACLU has obtained documents from the NYPD — a feat on par with prying paperwork away from the FBI, CIA or NSA — showing the department has been deploying Stingrays without a warrant since 2008. This puts them on the same timeline (and with the same lack of legal paperwork) as the Baltimore Police Department, although the BPD was much more proactive with their deployments: over 4,300 since 2008, as compared to the NYPD’s relatively restrained 1,016.

Hacking and computer exploitation by cyber spooks at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) threatens to “fundamentally weaken” the security of the internet, a legal expert with London-based campaigning group Privacy International (PI) has told IBTimes UK.

Scarlet Kim, who previously worked for the International Criminal Court and as a fellow at the New York Civil Liberties Union, has hit out against the recent ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that found intelligence agency spying – and computer hacking – to be perfectly legal.

“This ruling sends a dangerous message to other governments that endangering all of our communications is acceptable behaviour,” said Kim. “It also legitimises the incredible privacy intrusions entailed by state hacking. It opens the door for other states to engage in broad hacking operations against their own citizens, as well as those that reside outside their borders.

CIA boss John Brennan — perhaps still rattled from being put on the spot by Sen. Ron Wyden at a recent hearing — is now just saying whatever the hell he wants with little regard for facts.

As has been noted here in several posts, the terrorist attacks in Paris had nothing to do with encryption (or the Snowden leaks), although many government officials (and the French government itself) were quick to demonize both.

Almost immediately into the episode Stan addresses that he’s having computer issues at work, with it seeming like the logical move to bring Steve into the office to hook him up properly. This rather quickly turns into a whole CIA versus the NSA sort of thing, which is a welcome dynamic to add to all of this. This premise features a delightful educational film delineating the differences between the two organizations and their history. This ends up morphing into a great gag where the point of this film becomes more about Billy Bob Thornton, the film’s narrator. The joke only becomes stronger when we get the inverse of it later on from the opposite perspective, this time with George Takei narrating.

In spite of the help that Steve is able to provide, Stan, in trademark Stan fashion, abandons Steve and his “Edward Sissyhands” handshake in favor of the cooler kids at the CIA, and in doing so ushers Steve right into the hands of the NSA in the process. Steve’s feeling mighty vengeful at his father — although not vengeful enough to ignore crucial Adobe updates, he’s not a monster after all — and so the rival agency seems like the perfect fit for him.

Labour has written a letter to the home secretary, Theresa May, asking her to “reconsider” the current draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the new Snooper’s Charter). In the wake of three critical reports on the Bill, the letter wants her to “take into account” their conclusions and recommendations, and return to parliament with “a significantly revised and improved Bill.” Labour also says it is “essential that sufficient Parliamentary time is then set aside to enable full scrutiny.”

Civil Rights

We’ve talked a few times before about the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, a government office theoretically designed to keep money from flowing to and from scary people in scary countries or whatever. Its work typically amounts to keeping businesses from doing business-y things with people in places like North Korea and such. On the other hand, sometimes the folks at the OFAC get their knickers in a twist over a graphic novel about some of these scary people, so it’s not like these folks have a spotless record when it comes to keeping the proper targets in its collective sights.

President Obama’s failure to prosecute Bush-era torturers created an impunity that has encouraged some Republican presidential candidates to tout new plans for more torture if they reach the White House, a grotesque example of “American exceptionalism,” as Nat Parry explains

According to the psychologists who teamed up with the CIA to design, implement, and oversee the Agency’s post-9/11 torture program, torture is just politics. That’s what James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, CIA contractors who profited enormously from torture, told a federal court last month.

Facing a lawsuit by three of their victims, the psychologists argued that courts can’t even hear claims of U.S. government torture — because judges can’t condemn torture “without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, U.S. policy on the war against al-Qa’ida.” In other words, Mitchell and Jessen argue torture is a political decision that the executive branch gets to make without any judicial oversight.

The plan’s next step is already in motion. Last Friday, the local prefect announced that another 1,000 or so asylum seekers would be evicted imminently. This time, they will have approximately a week to clear a southern section of the camp.

Internet/Net Neutrality

The Internet has been a transformative technology for many people around the world, but not everyone. In fact, for about half of the people on our planet, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. Giving new meaning to the term “cloud computing” Google’s Project Loon is aiming to do something about that.

Project Loon is targeted to provide high-speed Internet service to remote regions of the world via swarms of helium-filled balloons circling the globe on stratospheric winds. After a series of setbacks, the service is finally going to be tested by carriers this year. And, Google Google has started testing Project Loon in Sri Lanka, after making a deal for spectrum with the government.

DRM

This is a message that we at Defective By Design have been sounding off on for years. Finally, the folks in Washington are starting to listen. On December 29th, 2015, the United States Copyright Office put out a Notice and Request for Public Comment on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. Congress asked them to study the effects of the anti-circumvention rules and the process of granting exemptions. This call for comment presents us with a rare opportunity to have our voice heard when they are finally paying attention.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

Over the past few years it’s become clear that many users have been watching pirated content using unofficial and unsupported add-ons that frequently break, and they are installing add-on repositories whose trustworthiness is questionable, leaving themselves open to numerous security exploits. Lately there’s even been a move to install “builds,” which intentionally break Kodi and, much like viruses, are almost impossible to uninstall, but have the benefit of adding LOTS of untrustworthy repos full of add-ons that don’t work.

Team Kodi maintains an officially neutral stance on what users do with their own software. Kodi is open source software, and as long as the GPL is followed, you are welcome to do with it as you like. So while we don’t love this use of Kodi, as long as you know what illegal and potentially dangerous things you are getting yourself into and accept the fact that the Team will not be providing you with any support, then you are welcome to do what you like.

Sheila Drew, who has lived her life for more than eight decades, has now been accused of being an Internet pirate. To prove that, she has received two letters and a £600 bill as well. While she is denying the charges but the trolling war sees no end. Let’s wait for the whole result.

Oh, the irony. First pointed out by Mathias Schindler, it appears that a copyright lecture about music copyright done by famed copyright expert and Harvard Law professor William Fisher has been taken down due to a copyright claim by Sony Music.

Copyright infringement kills creativity. It’s killing artists and depriving future generations of a variety of works that — if they could even be made in this era of lawlessness — should rightfully be withheld from the public until long after the future generation is dead and next generation fully grown. So. They. Say.

Kids, I’m sure you’ve heard about this “Deadpool,” the fourth-wall-breaking, foul-mouthed “superhero” currently raking in $$$ at the megaplexes. For years, it was a pet project passed back and forth between interested shepherds and less-interested studios. Everyone loved the idea but no one wanted to put their money behind it.